OVERNIGHT. Recitals.

Young Talents Give Lessons In Virtuosity

November 09, 1993|By John von Rhein, Tribune Music Critic.

Two young instrumentalists, both in their early 20s, gave Orchestra Hall lessons in the uses of virtuosity in separate recitals Sunday.

The Japanese violinist Midori, appearing on the Great Performers Series in the evening, and the Norwegian pianist Leif Ove Andsnes, who replaced Alexis Weissenberg on the afternoon Piano Series, had in common a directness of communication that shunned display for its own empty sake.

Their interaction with the music was honest, spontaneous and true, and, if not always illuminated with great originality or emotional depth, that was because each artist clearly is in the process of defining herself or himself artistically. Their journeys to musical maturity should be well worth following.

One sign that Midori is a self-possessed pro, at 22, was her nonchalant handling of a broken string during her vigorously intense account of Bartok's Sonata No. 1 (1921). When she snapped a string during a ferocious pizzicato passage in the finale, she stopped, excused herself, left the stage, quickly replaced the string and returned to the side of her pianist, Robert McDonald. They repeated the Allegro movement as if the accident had never occurred.

The sonata, which shows Bartok's anti-romanticism at its most severe, turned out to be the highlight of a widely ranging program. Midori found in its acrid gestures a persuasive balance between gritty intensity and moody impressionism. Violin and piano often are asked to veer in wildly disparate directions, but Midori and McDonald, her dependable colleague, always kept firmly in sync.

As for the other pieces, Beethoven's "Spring" Sonata sang with an unusually rapt elegance; one of Karol Szymanowski's three "Myths" reveled in delicate exoticism, and Saint-Saens' "Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso" closed the evening with a flourish of old-fashioned bravura. Alfred Schnittke's "Suite in the Old Style," however, seemed a pointless exercise in baroque-classical pastiche.

- This listener missed the first half of Andsnes' recital, devoted to Liszt and the pianist's countryman, Edvard Grieg, whose 150th birthday anniversary he celebrated with a selection of Grieg's Lyric Pieces and "Albumblatter." But his Chopin B-Minor Sonata, Opus 58, served notice that Andsnes, at 23, already is a Chopin interpreter to be reckoned with.

He is a thoughtful rather than flashy pianist; this was evinced by the depths of poetic introspection he was able to plumb in the Largo. He caught the epic sweep, the purling grace, of the outer movements with impressive control and a nicely rounded sonority. His international career has been getting a big boost because of his Virgin Classics recording contract. More Grieg arrived as the first encore, "Norwegian Peasant March" (Lyric Pieces, Opus 54). Andsnes played it with an admirable depth of tone and idiomatic conviction.